Guide
How to play Inlay
Inlay (the Patches engine) tiles a grid with non-overlapping rectangles. Each clue sits in exactly one rectangle; a number is the area, and the glyph says square, tall, wide, or any rectangle. You are done when the board is covered with no gaps.
Rules
- Drag rectangles that cover the clues — Click and drag to draw a colored inlay. A number is the exact cell count. A solid square must be square; a bar must stay tall or wide.
- No gaps, overlaps, or two clues in one tile — You cannot leave empty cells, stack two inlays, or put two clues inside one rectangle. Each inlay owns exactly one clue.
- Tap a placed inlay to remove it — Green preview means the drag is legal. Red means it breaks a clue. Tap a finished patch to clear it and retry.
- Do not ignore the glyph — You cannot treat every clue as a free rectangle. Color is identity; the square / tall / wide / dashed-plus mark is the rule.
Tips
- Place the biggest piece first — Large rectangles have few legal origins. Lock them, then the small squares drop into leftovers.
- Read the glyph, not the color — Tall vs wide vs square is the real constraint. Color is just identity.
- Edge strips — A 1-cell border strip can only take a matching tall or wide piece. Scan edges early.
- One cell, two clues — If two pieces still claim the same cell, undo the last ambiguous placement rather than squeezing.
Where it comes from
Nikoli published Shikaku (Divide by Squares) in the 1980s: dissect a grid into rectangles, each containing one numbered cell equal to its area. Inlay adds shape glyphs (square / tall / wide / free) on top of that covering idea.
How it differs from similar puzzles
Classic Shikaku is area-only: the number tells you how many cells the rectangle covers and nothing about its shape. Inlay can omit the number and constrain the shape instead, or ask for both at once. Fillomino is a cousin that fills a grid with polyominoes rather than rectangles.
Also known as
Known as Shikaku, Divide by Squares, rectangles puzzle, or Inlay. Inside the code the engine is still called Patches.
- Shikaku
- Divide by Squares
- Rectangles
- Inlay
- Nikoli rectangles